Saturday, August 18, 2012

When it comes to Amazon book sales, arrows are now mightier than magic wands.

Today the online retail giant announced that The Hunger Games book series written by Suzanne Collins has surpassed the previous best-selling series of all time, Harry Potter.

This is an impressive feat because Hunger Games, which follows 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen’s quest for survival in the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, is only a trilogy of books with fewer pages than the seven Harry Potter books. Not only that, but the series has only been in circulation since 2008, and has only one major blockbuster movie adaptation (while Harry Potter has eight).

It’s also worth pointing out that Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling held off on offering digital versions of the book for quite a while, perhaps to build consumer demand like Disney does with its animated classics on Blu-ray and DVD. The Harry Potter e-books were first made available on the Pottermore website a year ago, and only started offeringe-book sales to other vendors — like Amazon’s Kindle store — back in March. But despite the delayed digital strategy, muggles haven’t been able to sustain the top spot.

Hunger Games trilogy is currently in the top 50 books for both print and Kindle formats, according to Amazon.

Overall, the announcement by Amazon shows that digital purchases are becoming more popular among readers, especially when it comes to hot young adult book series that have been adapted by Hollywood.